Chapter V The Red Fox of Dhalmatia
He entered in the house—his home no more;
For without hearts there is no home;—and felt
The solitude of passing his own door
Without a welcome.
—Byron: Don Juan.
Castle Dhalmatia proved to be but a short distance ahead. I held the unconscious Prince in my arms while Nick leaned forward and called road directions into the Japanese driver’s ear. General Palmora remembered a byway which was a short cut across the Red Fox’s estate and we saved several minutes thereby. The walls of the Prince’s home loomed up black and sombre against the sky line on the top of a hill vacant of trees. Like Castle Comada it was a fortress built for defence rather than for comfort. Its battlements and watchtowers were stern and forbidding.
Rapid as were our movements, the news of the accident preceded us, borne no doubt by the returning horse with the empty saddle. Stable grooms were coming down the road toward us carrying lanterns; house servants were arousing the master. Some were weeping aloud, running wildly about; others were shouting orders and talking, like persons who desired to do something but did not know what to do. Lights began to show in different rooms of the castle and, when we drew up with a rush and a grinding of brakes under the porte-cochère, a crowd of retainers were there to meet us.
As soon as they caught sight of the limp figure in my arms they imagined the Prince dead and their wailings broke out afresh. In the midst of the excitement, which even the commanding voice of the General failed to quell, a little, bent, old man with a weazen, wrinkled face, but with a certain virility of manner which proclaimed him master, appeared in the doorway. His voice vibrated through the air and forced obedience. He called to his servants in the Bharbazonian dialect and a silence fell upon them, in which there was more of fear than of love. I knew at once that I was in the presence of the Red Fox of Dhalmatia, the father of the Prince.
Standing in the lantern light he made a curious picture. He was attired in black from head to foot. On his head was a black fez that only partially concealed a mass of hair which, though darker in shade and streaked with gray, was the same colour as his son’s. The first part of the Red Fox’s name was derived no doubt from the colour of his hair.
Around his neck was a broad lace collar of white, extending to his narrow shoulders. He wore a close fitting coat buttoned up the front with a row of large ornamental buttons. Knee breeches with buckles at the side, silk stockings, and buckled shoes made up the rest of his costume. Over his shoulders hung a long Spanish cloak which partially concealed the hilt of a jewelled sword suspended from his left hip. There was that about him which suggested the stern, hard, old Pilgrim fathers who conquered the Massachusetts wilderness and burned witches three centuries ago.
If he felt any emotion at the condition of his son, he did not permit himself to show it, but, with a gesture in which was the majesty of command, he bade me enter with my burden.
I carried the Prince to the nearest couch in the spacious hallway, followed by Nick and the General. The Red Fox shut the door in the faces of his servants and dismissed them with a few terse words. The only one he permitted to remain was an aged man whom I recognized was the butler. The room was dark and this old fellow held a lantern close to the boy’s face and fell into a fit of weeping. As soon as I placed the Prince on the divan, and before I could make an examination, I was rather rudely brushed aside by the boy’s father and the old butler, both of whom seemed suddenly crazed by the accident.
They crowded me away and bent over the Prince, together making a rapid, superficial examination of the boy for broken bones, and finding none. There was a slight wound above the right ear and a cut on the left arm above the elbow. The right arm was dislocated. With the old servant’s assistance, the father experienced little difficulty in slipping it back into place. I was rather impressed with the Red Fox’s deftness and sureness of touch.
During the examination, General Palmora explained that I was a physician and that I could give the Prince the best of treatment. He made his explanations in French, which I think was for my benefit, and the Red Fox replied in the same tongue.
“A doctor,” he queried, “what have we to do with doctors in Dhalmatia?”
“But, my dear Duke, the boy is seriously injured.”
“So? So?” cried the Fox, “and is that any reason why I should permit strangers to intrude upon the privacy of my house, especially friends of yours, Palmora, to run things as they please?”
“I would have you understand, sir,” replied the General with dignity, “that only such untoward circumstances as the present would have permitted me to enter your house, and to so far forget the respect I owe my friends as to allow them to cross your threshold.”
“’Tis unfortunate,” said the Duke, still working over the boy. “The General should remember that the House of Dhalmatia can take care of itself.”
“The General did not forget,” replied the soldier, hotly; “but in this case he begs the Duke to consider that the Prince is not the son of Dhalmatia—”
“What!” shouted the Duke, going suddenly pale with extreme agitation and advancing threateningly toward the General, who did not seem to mind the feelings the remarks were stirring up.
“Not the son of Dhalmatia, but the heir to the throne of Bharbazonia, and therefore he is my liege lord and master. As a patriot I must care for him. Beside, it was our automobile which caused his accident.”
The Duke sank down on his knees beside the couch at his son’s feet as if his strength had forsaken him. He offered no further objection to our presence and watched as the old servant attempted to revive the patient. When at last, under the effect of the restorative, the boy opened his eyes the first person he saw and smiled upon was his father. Then his eyes met mine.
They were the most beautiful I have ever seen in a boy’s head, and they thrilled me with the look of quiet suffering in them. Large and expressive, they reminded me of Nicholas in his best mood, when he sang his Balkan love songs. From the colour of the Prince’s hair I expected his eyes to be a pale blue, but, on the contrary, they were a deep rich brown, almost black. Shining in their mysterious depth was something akin to sorrow, which I could not understand but which became clearer later.
The old Duke did not seem greatly relieved when his son recovered consciousness; possibly he realized that the boy had been nearer death than he imagined; possibly there was another reason. At all events, he waved us all back from the couch and gathered the Prince in his arms.
“My son! My son!” he repeated again and again, sometimes in French and sometimes in his own language. But it did not seem to me to be the agonized cry of a broken-hearted father; there was a note of caution in it, as if he would say, “My son, be careful; the enemies of your father are present.”
The Prince lay still, studying each face in the room over his father’s shoulder. He recognized the General with a bright friendly smile. The General returned the salutation with a frigid ceremonial bow. Nick seemed to puzzle him. He looked at the handsome youth a long time as if trying to remember where they had met before, and yet not sure they had met at all.
“If you are satisfied, Dr. Wharton, that the patient is on a fair way to recovery,” broke in the General, still chafing under the impoliteness of the Duke, “I suggest that we take our departure from this ungrateful house.”
But his voice was gentle and caressing when he added to the Prince:
“I trust your Highness will experience no further evil results from your unfortunate fall.”
“We also crave the Prince’s pardon for causing his fall, and will do ourselves the honour of calling with the doctor in the morning to inquire after his health.”
While Nicholas was speaking the Duke shifted his head so that he could see the young man’s face over his shoulder without appearing to do so. All the time he seemed to be devoting his whole attention to his son. The movement was secretive and, I thought, uncalled for; but it revealed why those who knew him called him “The Fox.”
“Before we go,” I said in my character of physician, “I would suggest that the Prince remain in bed for the next few days in order to rest the arm which was dislocated and to determine the presence, if any, of internal injuries. With your permission, Duke, I will take the liberty of calling again. I trust, if anything develops which you may not feel equal to coping with, that you will not hesitate to make use of my services.”
With the Grand Duke’s cry of “My son! My son!” as our only answer, we bowed our way through the doorway and entered the car which was still chug-chugging away at the door, the tired Jap boy asleep at the wheel. It was very dark when we resumed our journey, which was quickly at an end. Two miles from Dhalmatia we turned through a high stone archway of a private estate and came to Castle Framkor.
It was too dark for me to see anything of the outside of the castle except the porte-cochère, under which we stopped, and the open front door from which the servants trooped with cries of welcome. If there was a similarity about the entrance there was none in the spirit of the two castles.
A tri-colour collie dog was the first to greet us. He ran wildly about the car barking at the engines and sniffing at the visitors. He recognized the General and tried to get into the seat with him.
“Down, Laddie; down, sir,” commanded his master as he sprang to the ground, to be overwhelmed by the excited dog, which leaped against his shoulder and tried to caress his face.
Willing hands opened the tonneau door and Nick and I descended. The dog sniffed at our legs and growled at us. Smiling women servants gathered around the master while the men, in obedience to his commands, carried our trunks and hand luggage into the hall.
“Welcome home to Framkor, Nicholas,” cried the General. It was the first word he had spoken since his farewell speech at Dhalmatia. But all his gloom had left him.
Nicholas made no reply. Not a single servant knew him and no one welcomed him back to his own home. While it was indeed a splendid homecoming for the General, I pitied Nick and realized what he had been sacrificing all his life for the sake of his country. It is one thing to choose a vocation for yourself and quite another to have some one choose it for you.
The hall room was comfortably warmed by an open grate fire which burned under the mantelpiece. Above hung a full length picture of a man about the General’s age in scarlet regimentals. He bore a striking resemblance to Nick.
“That’s dad,” said the boy as we gathered round the fire to drive out the cold of the night. He looked long and earnestly upon his father’s portrait. What moody thoughts were passing in his mind I could not imagine. But the sternness of the pictured face was reflected in the living one beneath.
“What we need most of all is dinner,” said the General.
“Hear, hear,” I cried lightly.
The thought was scarcely expressed before a servant bade us enter the dining room. The meal that followed could not have been surpassed by the French chef at the Turk’s Head Inn. Bharbazonia might be archaic, but Framkor Castle under the direction of Nick’s father’s executor was delightfully modern. I promised myself considerable gastronomic enjoyment during my vacation in Bharbazonia.
After the feast, which we all ate with a hunger born of our long ride in the bracing air, the General and I settled ourselves in the drawing room for a long, comfortable chat before bedtime. I was burning to learn more about the Red Fox, now that I had seen the Castle tower from which the old nurse fell the night the Prince was born. The General was still suffering from his injured feelings.
“Can you wonder, now, why I hate the Fox?” he said. “The ingrate, to return our kindness with such discourtesy. The low-bred hound, better we had left his son in the road to die. Never again will I find myself under his roof and you boys, too, would do well not to visit that castle again. He will insult you if you attempt it; now mark my words.”
Nick, who did not share my interest in the Red Fox, had gone on an exploring trip through the house, recalling childhood memories. He came into the music room adjoining and began fingering the keys of the piano.
“I am glad, at all events,” he called, “that the young fellow was not seriously hurt.”
“Humph,” grunted Palmora under his breath, “you would have more reason to be happy if the horse had made a good job of it.”
At this remarkable outburst I stared at the regicidal old person, who, seeing my surprise, leaped to his feet and paced the floor, pulling on his long pipe to keep his temper down. No doubt he felt that he had overreached himself, for he came back with an apology.
“There are things in this Kingdom that are unknown even to Nicholas,” he said mildly, lowering his voice. “I trust that the time will come when it will be given him to know. Then I would like to be the messenger.”
“The Prince,” I said, “is the handsomest boy I have ever seen.”
But the General did not reply. He was listening with rapt attention to the fine whole-souled barytone voice of his Bharbazonian boy, singing a folksong in the language. The expression on his face partook of the look of a devout worshipper before his best loved shrine.
“Volt nekem egy daru ssoru paripam,” sang Nick.
The accompaniment he was playing was in that weird minor strain which always sends a shiver down one’s back. The words of the song told of the sorrow of a nation in bondage. It was an old favourite with me, for Nick often sang it when the lights were low and the schoolroom problems were laid away for the night. I admired it so much that Nick gave me the music, written by Francis Korbay, and it was even now lying on my piano at home. In English the song runs:
“Had a horse, a finer no man ever saw;
But the sheriff sold him in the name of law.
E’en a stirrup cup the rascal would not yield.
But, no matter! more was lost at Mohacs’ field.
“Had a farmhouse, but they burnt it to the ground;
Don’t know even where the spot may now be found.
In the county roll ’tis safe inscribed and sealed;
But, no matter! more was lost at Mohacs’ field.
“Had a sweetheart; mourned her loss for years and years;
Thought her dead and every day gave her my tears.
Now, I find her ’neath another’s roof and shield;
But, no matter! more was lost at Mohacs’ field.”
As Nick poured his soul into the rendition of the war song of the Balkans, a song which he told me every native knew and revered as he loved his Bible, I could almost picture the little handful of 25,000 men who fell before the overwhelming force of 200,000 Turks on that fateful day, August 29, 1526, when “Mohacsnal” became to the Slavs what “Don’t give up the ship” was to the Americans hundreds of years later. I was not surprised to hear the General’s deep bass join in the single line refrain at the close of each verse:
“No, de se baj, tobb is veszett Mohacsnal!”
With such a spirit abroad in the land, I could understand how the defeated but unconquered Hungarian and Balkan warriors continued the struggle until there is little left of the dwindling empire of the “unspeakable Turk” in Europe to-day except the dissatisfied country around his capital city of Constantinople.
“Great song,” panted the General when Nick concluded, but the light of battle died out of his eyes when Nick, after a few preliminary chords, broke into the popular American songs of the day and cleared the atmosphere of its political heaviness. We were all in the best of spirits when we retired. Although there were many rooms in the castle, I found to my delight that Nick and I were to sleep together in his boyhood chamber. Possibly it was the association of ideas, but believe it who will, we romped about like children and did not get to sleep until the General came to the door to interrupt our pillow fight with the natural complaint that he was unable to sleep, and the dry suggestion that we repair to the lawn to finish it.
At sight of the bristling old warrior in his pink nightcap and pajamas to match, we scurried beneath the covers with such a perfect imitation of two naughty boys who expected to be spanked and put to bed, that even the General, forgetting his irritation, was forced to lose his gravity and join in the general merriment.
Long after the lights were out and we were quieted down, too tired to laugh any more, I heard Nick drawl sleepily in memory of our college days:
“Let’s go over to Woodland avenue and steal a lamp post.”
Outside a gentle wind rustled the ivy vines clinging patiently to the Castle wall. Not another sound disturbed the stillness of the country night. Overcome by the silence I drifted away in the arms of sleep well content with my first hours in the Kingdom of Bharbazonia.
The next day we met Solonika.